My wife said something today that made me sit up and think about the oft quoted 'artery clogging saturated fat'.

She said 'Fat is slippery, sugar is sticky; why would fat stick?'

When you pick up a boiled sweet for example, the stickiness is the proteins in your skin being glycated.

When sugar hits the bloodstream, whether via sucrose or digested carbohydrate the body goes into emergency mode and shunts it to glycogen, stored in the muscles or liver, or fat.

Sugar 'sticks' to protein by a process known as glycation. This is deadly - especially if you are diabetic - as excess sugar results in Advanced Glycation End Products( A.G.E.S - which they do!) and inflammation. Over time the immune system will attack the damaged proteins whether cartilage in joints (arthritis) or the coronary arteries (atherosclerosis). That's when big bad cholesterol arrives to try and repair the damage. And thus the cycle is repeated with repeated insult from sugar. (Incidentally sucrose is far worse than digested starch as the fructose half of the molecule glycates protein ten times more then glucose).

In diabetes, a separate subject, the insult of sugar is ramped up to the nth degree and Alzheimers is being called 'type three diabetes!'

Sugar is tightly controlled in the bloodstream, with the average body only having the equivalent of about a teaspoon circulating. A quarter less and you are hypoglycaemic (you'll faint), a quarter more and you are diabetic!

This makes a mockery of 'sports' or 'energy' drinks. People think that drinking that muck will give them an energy boost till it's used up, then go for another top up. Far from it, the body immediately pumps insulin to get it safely stored and you then get a (normal) hypo. It makes me wonder, when I see young girls sucking up Lucozade would drink it were they to know it immediately turns to fat!

Cut out sugar entirely and severely limit easily digested carbohydrate (essentially anything white and refined) go back to eating saturated fat and you will be eating like our big tall ancestors whilst avoiding the absurdity of the current dietary guidelines.

My parents and grandparents ate less sugar that my generation, even though my father took sugar in his tea (two tsps.) and had a spoon full of sugar on his cereal every morning! The thing was they didn't eat any bought cakes, biscuits or breads. It was all made at home. My mother would buy a 2lb bag (remember the blue bags that you got filled at the greengrocers?)! and a 3lb blue bag of bread flour, SR flour and Plain flour every week along with 2 dozen eggs, and 2lbs of "good" butter. My father lived until he was 87, his weight never varied from 8.5 stone and my mother 74.

My mother started to put on weight in later life because she was concerned that she was approaching the age that her mother died and tried to lose some weight with dieting. I think she should have left well alone. She was only 2 stone overweight but was fit and took regular exercise (we walked everywhere) but battled to lose that 2 stone by dieting over and over again and I believe that led to her heart problems - not the weight itself. She was always on faddy diets with a high sugar content (do you remember all those "biscuit" diets in the 60s and 70s that were so well advertised?)

If she had only stuck to her normal diet and ate a little less of it she would have been a lot healthier and happier.

If you feel you have side effects from your medication, you should speak to your doctor or pharmacist about it.

However, you can also report your side effects to the drug regulator, the MHRA through its Yellow Card scheme which helps it work out if there may be a problem with the drug.

Find out more in How do I report a side effect of my medication?

What did the research involve?

The researchers matched 6,967 statin users with 6,967 non-users who had similar baseline characteristics and were enrolled in the San Antonio Military as Tricare Prime/Plus. Tricare is the health care program serving military (and associated agency) personnel, retirees, and their families.

The technique used for matching the statin users and non-users is called ‘propensity score matching’.

The researchers used information ...............

My Question?

This is a piece of a report,

I always question??????????Why do they choose Military people to do tests?

they are expected to be very fit.with excellent HEALTH.

if WE are worried about a Medication?...it is because we have some illness?

so why do tests to compare us to Really Healthy People?

I feel as though we are all going round in Circles...

no one seems prepared to say NO....or,YES TO STATINS

.

I stopped them months ago.do I feel better?NO.my Joints are still painful..

Hi, Mike. it,s the best thing I,ve done reading your blogs, since suffering a TIA last year have been put on various Statins, have recently stopped them, and taken onboard your remarks re sugars etc, as you say arterial inflammation was the culprit, I feel so much better 8 weeks only.

Going to GP in 4 more weeks for appointment for bood tests, Chol test etc, should I ask for lipid test also.

If the carbs are lowered HDL (so called 'good' cholesterol) goes up, so does LDL ('bad') but LDL will be large buoyant rather than small dense (which are regarded as dangerous). Triglycerides, a marker for heart risk, will also be down. Generally speaking (as far as I remember) the normal 'well man' blood test gives total cholesterol, HDL, LDL, and triglycerides.

Inflammation is only another theory, as is the lipid hypothesis. Basically, nobody really knows. I would be careful and take medical advice before stopping your medication. Statins are much more effective in secondary prevention, that is if you had already had some sort of event, even my statin sceptic GP tells me this.

A lipid profile is the same as a cholesterol test, you'll get total cholesterol, LDL,HDL, and triglycerides. Good luck.

Iv`e read a blog by an american cardiologist who says the same thing. I want to find sugar free alternatives to my favourite sweet foods, but you can`t find them in the shops. I`m wondering if food manufacturers are being bribed by the government to produce food that shortens our lives, so saving money on pensions & winter fuel payments. Maybe I`m just being paranoid.

It has only recently been approved as a food additive recently in this country. For my part gradually weaning myself off sugar has meant I can take it or leave it and the habit of craving 'pudding' has largely left me.

There's very big money in the sugar industry, so I wouldn't be at all surprised. But there is still no clear science on the safety of many sweeteners. Like Mike says, if you can wean yourself off of sugar, best not to replace it with something else.

I agree - there is not always an easy way out - I went cold turkey on sugar in beverages - it had something to do with a communal kitchen and the proximity of the ashtray and the sugar bowl.

It seems each time there is an issue, which may impact public health - dent profits, the first response is denial and diversionary tactics then the new products and the lobbying begin. Think of tobacco - then fast food - then drinks with sugar - then drinks with sweetner - then sweetened / flavoured water.

Who has the incentive to keep ahead and protect its revenue streams - a few global players - they are not overly concerned exactly what they sell as long as they are selling. McDonald's added a shrimp burger to its menu in Japan to boost sales in the country as global income increased 11pc to $5.5bn.

There were just two tobacco deals in the second quarter, but both illustrate the efforts tobacco companies are making to diversify away from traditional cigarettes.

Mike I like your posts but I don't understand why you say - "When sugar hits the bloodstream, whether via sucrose or digested carbohydrate the body goes into emergency mode and shunts it to glycogen, stored in the muscles or liver, or fat."

Is is not possible for some - lets not get into the excess discussion here - glycogen storage to be a natural and helpful process. Muscle contractions are a helpful bodily function and they need to be powered.

It is the use of "into emergency mode" which I am unclear about.

Would it now be the case that only if the muscle and liver stores were full would excess glycogen then be stored as fat.